HuB brings co-working concept to Sarasota

Thursday

Apr 25, 2013 at 10:36 AM

Started in 2009 in a former warehouse space, the HuB's loose coalition of creative types also has cultivated an image where fun and business mix.

By MICHAEL POLLICK

On a recent Tuesday afternoon at the HuB, a collaborative workspace for media-savvy techies in downtown Sarasota, Congressman Vern Buchanan popped by for a tour and a stock speech in a spacious third-floor lounge area.

At the other end of the same floor, workers with the affiliated HuB Studios were polishing up a pro-bono video about local drag queen Beneva Fruitville.

"So while Vern was speaking, there was glitter and fake boobs on our computer screens," said HuB Studios co-owner Joey Panek.

Such is the dichotomy of the HuB, one that is epitomized by its members, who simultaneously embrace hippie cool bohemianism and a burning desire to be at the epicenter of Sarasota while changing it and the world beyond.

Started in 2009 in a former warehouse space, the HuB's loose coalition of creative types also has cultivated an image where fun and business mix.

When Sarasota was competing against other U.S. cities to land a Google high-speed Internet upgrade, HuB founder Rich Swier Jr. and his crew garnered national attention by labeling the city "Google Island."

The HuBsters also persuaded then-Mayor Dick Clapp to don scuba gear and jump in a pool of hammerhead sharks to show Google Sarasota meant business. The dive went viral on YouTube.

But just as it evolved from its reputed party boy beginnings, the HuB took a quantum physical leap forward in late 2011, when software entrepreneur Jesse Biter convinced Swier to move the operation to a four-story building he had acquired and was renovating at 1680 Fruitville Road.

The move allowed the group to further its mission of creating a more modern Sarasota economy by attracting younger professionals and providing reasons for them to stay.

There are now 58 people working on the third floor of Biter's building, though Swier chafes at describing the HuB as an "incubator."

The mix includes folks who do work for hire, like the HuB Studios co-owner Panek, and others who simply use the HuB's resources and energy to further their own business plans.

Barefoot and serious

Swier, who co-founded the HuB, acts as the group's de facto spokesman and gatekeeper.

He also is a financial angel, with stakes in 10 of the HuB's 27 different ventures at present.

Not that he looks it. At 40, Swier is often seen padding around the HuB barefoot and unshaven, sporting baggy shorts and wrinkled T-shirts.

He wore a similar outfit to a round-table discussion about entrepreneurship with Buchanan, held in Biter's spacious fourth-floor offices. Biter and Buchanan's son, Matt, together created a group buying program for car dealers called Dealers United.

Behind the scruffy look, though, Swier is serious about the HuB's mission.

"When you come to work here, you feel like everybody is working on the same company," Swier said. "But in reality, everybody has their separate company. It is kind of weird, but it is like the perfect cooperation."

But for all the gains in image and cache Fruitville Road provided, Swier was initially reluctant to leave the HuB's previous Boulevard of the Arts digs.

"I had my reservations, but (Biter) made us a sweet deal and we took it," Swier said.

About a dozen HuB veterans moved over, and the remaining spaces were rented beginning in January. Each business rents their space for $600 per month.

Swier clearly is proud of the circular relationships the HuB has both allowed and perpetuated.

"Everybody benefits from being here," he said. "Jesse is a customer for a lot of the companies inside the HuB, and we, in turn, help him by making the building an awesome place and he benefits from that exposure."

To reinforce the concept of cross-fertilization, the majority of space on the HuB's 10,000-square-foot floor, mostly in the middle, is open. Besides the lounge area that HuBbies call "the kitchen," there are seating areas and conference rooms.

For the individual businesses, too, there are advantages.

Graphic artist Michael Muscarella, for example, left Sarasota Magazine, where he was art director, in January to freelance at the HuB.

He could have gone to another magazine, but that would have meant leaving Sarasota. Instead, Muscarella and his new business partner are developing smart phone apps and generating income from graphic art and design projects.

Many of those jobs, Swier points out, come from the other HuB businesses.

"When Michael came here, we already had work for him to do," Swier said. "If needed, while he was working on his projects and had gaps in his time, or needed to make more money, we had work he could plug right into. We try to create an ecosystem that is friendly to that."

But the HuB has not been without friction, or comparisons to a similarly focused organization that initially rose to great attention before largely disappearing from view.

Almost a decade ago, when it was formed, the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce's Young Professionals Group created a significant buzz, and many predicted it would be a tour de force in politics and business alike for years to come.

While the group continues to exist, it is a shadow of its former self.

At the HuB, the group weathered a potential PR hit with the apparently sudden and largely unexplained departure of Matt Orr. Orr, who was well known in Sarasota as a Realtor, part-time actor and bon vivant, was the public face of the early HuB.

But he left the fold in December 2011, just as the group was preparing to relocate to Biter's building.

Orr now lives in Los Angeles. Reached via email, he declined to respond to questions about his HuB exit.

He has not severed all ties to Southwest Florida. Orr continues to own "This Week in Sarasota," a digital news magazine he began while at the HuB.

Swier said he thinks a shift in direction at HuB Studios contributed to Orr's departure.

"We disagreed on the path," Swier said. "We are still friends."

The Co-working Phenomenon

The concept of communal work environments is hardly new. The first such spaces in the U.S. sprung up in San Francisco nearly a decade ago.

Today, there are roughly 800 HuB-like hubs nationwide, said Liz Elam, an Austin, Texas, resident who runs a pair of co-working offices and who produces an annual industry get-together called the Global Coworking Unconference Conference.

Elam estimates that 10 new co-working spaces open up every two days in this country, the result of a fundamental shift in the way people choose to work, technogical advancements and corporate America's desire to cut space costs.

"The convergence has opened a huge opportunity in co-working space," Elam said.

"The new co-working places are more community-related," agrees Stuart Rogel, president of the Tampa Bay Partnership, an economic development group. "You might share copiers and conference rooms as well, but really you're sharing ideas. That is what is different and what is exciting. It's people saying 'How can you help me and how can I help you?'"

Back in Sarasota, the concept also is attracting the attention of economic development and philanthropic stalwarts like the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.

"Really, if the HuB hadn't already been in existence, it would have been something that Gulf Coast would have wanted to set up," said Teri Hansen, the group's president and chief executive. "It is so necessary for the growth and vitality of our community."

Suncoast Technology Forum president Jeff Kratsch said his group, which represents more than 50 technology companies, also sees good things in the HuB.

"They are making things happen," Kratsch said. "And there are a lot of folks, call them the 30-somethings, younger professionals starting families, and they are a growing population in this area."

A HuB kind of guy

Barak Hirschowitz, meanwhile, is the kind of guy Swier hopes to attract, and keep, in Sarasota.

Hirschowitz founded a global hospitality recruitment business, Hospitalio Inc., in Capetown, South Africa, where he worked as a gourmet chef.

He and his wife and two children moved to Sarasota in 2009, and he ran the business from his home while maintaining a five-person office in Capetown.

But as the business grew, he was drawn to the HuB.

"I needed this kind of space," said Hirschowitz, who is building a pair of web-based businesses, luxury-hospitality.com and chef.com.

Using a software platform that Swier helped Biter develop for Dealers United, Hirschowitz hopes to apply it to the hospitality field.

"We don't have any experience in hospitality but Barak does," Swier said. "We have the technology and it is already built."

This technology transfer, Swier insists, "would have never happened in a million years if we weren't in this same hub. This is the mentality people don't understand."

Though many HuB companies are startups, there is one that Swier refers to as "a graduate."

Jeff Hazelton founded what is now Lucid Global, an animation studio specializing in health care applications, in a one-room office in the HuB's former quarters.

An adjunct instructor at Sarasota's Ringling College of Art & Design, Hazelton developed software that allows iPad users wearing 3-D glasses to see three-dimensional animations that float above the tablet's high-definition screen.

His first animation was of a beating human heart, which is now used by cardiologists to show patients how surgery could help compromised organs.

Lucid is now working on animated products that deal with other human disorders.

Clients include big name pharmaceutical outfits such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca, as well as medical device makers and hospitals.

"We are a real animation studio," said Hazelton, who now employs 25 people including 11 Ringling College of Art & Design graduates. "Last year, we were the No. 1 recruiter of Ringling grads — more than Pixar, more than Disney, more than anybody."

Hazelton's focus, too, is on retaining workers.

"Here, what we try to do is train our people to work for us long-term and then keep them here," he said.

"If we could get 10 companies like Lucid Global that leverage the talent here, that is a game-changer for the city," Swier added.

Michael Mathewson and Dana Obleman embodied that idea when they chose Sarasota over British Columbia last July as a home base for their 10-year-old business.

Their "Sleep Sense Program" teaches parents how to get their babies to sleep at night without fussing. Obleman developed her methods raising her own three children.

"We loved the energy in here, we loved the idea of being in a collaborative space with other interesting entrepreneurs, and to make some friends as well," Obleman said of the HuB.

Politically involved

As committed as he is to business growth, Swier has never shied away from expressing his views on city politics. That visibility has grown, too, as Biter, a conservative Republican, has become affiliated with the group.

"City politics matters to us quite a bit," said Swier, who describes himself as an Obama Democrat. "In order for us to attract young professionals and entrepreneurs to the city, our city needs to be welcoming to those people and have the ability for them to enjoy their life."

Many young professionals love downtown Sarasota, Swier contends, but they cannot afford to rent or buy a condo at $2,500 per month.

"But they don't want to live at Bee Ridge and Beneva, either," he adds. "They want to be around a vibrant downtown and that is what we have here, so we need attainable housing for these professionals, these entrepreneurs. It is an absolute must."

To that end, Swier is busy trying to get pro-growth candidate Richard Dorfman elected to Sarasota's City Commission.

A three-way runoff election, for a pair of seats, will be held May 14.

"I just like him as a person and I think he has a good idea of what it takes to move the city forward," he said of Dorfman.